FRANKIE BANALI Is 'Not Apologetic' For Saying He Would Never Reform QUIET RIOT Without KEVIN DUBROW

Fred Topel of CraveOnline.com recently conducted an interview with QUIET RIOT drummer Frankie Banali and Regina Russell, the writer and director of "Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back: The Quiet Riot Movie", the feature documentary on QUIET RIOT. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

CraveOnline.com: Is there anything like saying no, we'll never reformQUIET RIOT to motivate you to ultimately reform QUIET RIOT?

Frankie Banali: QUIET RIOT has had a long history of being told no and we can't do that. Right from the get-go, nobody was really interested in signing the band, and if you look at historically what happened, it was the complete opposite of no, you can't. That has been a common thread through the entire history of the band, so I'm pretty much used to having people tell me no and then I go ahead and do it anyway.

CraveOnline.com: And even when you tell yourself no, you go ahead and do it anyway?

Frankie Banali: Yeah, well, you have to understand, and what most people don't understand is when I lost Kevin [DuBrow, QUIET RIOT singer], to me, it was just complete darkness. I never really thought I'd see light at the end of that tunnel again. I mean, there really was no light at the end of that tunnel, but as time passed and I was able to reconcile with the situation, I found that I missed Kevin, but I also missed QUIET RIOT and at the end of the day, this is what I do and I saw no reason to stop doing it. So I'm not apologetic for my statement. The statement was made, it was very honest and it was made during a period of intense grief.

CraveOnline.com: Was auditioning new singers almost worse than hearing any karaoke rendition of "Cum On Feel The Noize"?

Frankie Banali: I gotta be honest with you, I have never, and this is no disrespect to some of the kind people that came down and were trying to grab that so called brass ring, I can't remember the last time when I have laughed so much and also felt embarrassed so much. It was an interesting process.

CraveOnline.com: It made me think, usually when people pick that song at karaoke they know how to do it.

Frankie Banali: Well, there's one thing doing it karaoke, especially after you've had several drinks and your audience has had more than several drinks and it all really, really sounds good. I know that when I get in the shower and sing, I sound like [Italian operatic tenor of the early 20th century] Caruso and you definitely want to keep a microphone away from me. But, when these people came in, God bless 'em but they were not anywhere near the mark.

Regina Russell: One thing that I found that was interesting was when we started talking to singers about coming down to audition, we had a lot of pro singers on the list. When they found out that they had to learn that song, a lot of the really good ones dropped out because they knew that they could not hit those notes. It was the ones that didn't know that they couldn't hit the notes that actually showed up.

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